Fusion 2023 Annual Review (2022)

Score

Summary: Well suited for fans of classic multi-format gaming magazines you remember from your youth. Is a lot of variety on offer and maybe some new discoveries.

5

A gaming smorgasboard!

I had enjoyed the Fusion Annual in previous years and it certainly gives you some variety in the contents with a range of topics covered apart from retro gaming which makes it different from the other retro gaming publications. For this one some of these stories have been covered in the magazines during the year and some written for the annual if it is like previous annuals I have read.

For this one I got a deal on getting all of the annuals in one go but would have considered getting this one if I was only getting a couple of these due to the variety involved.

There are some deep dives on some of these topics as I had not heard of a lot of this stuff and I have been following gaming news for a long time. For the first time this year Toy Polloi got his own annual but that is now sold out. You can find a couple of articles written by him just for this annual in this book.

I also had someone asking where they could buy this publication just from posting a screenshot of one of the pages, the Atari Video Adventure section by DJ Slopes. There were some pages I had to share with other people as I had never heard of what they were talking about but I knew they might like it so it reminds me of reading UK gaming magazines in the 1990s and wanting to share them with people (only this time I get them back and not stolen.)

This is another one it is good to pick up and put down as I read it in bits during my lunch break over a month or so as I did not want to rush through it. The hard cover makes it good to shove into a bag and you don’t have to worry about it getting bashed up. They do have folders available on the website if you want to store them. I would have thought it being A5 would diminish the experience but apart from some of the smaller text it is not too bad.

I would recommend this one if you are a fan of the multi-format games magazines that used to be popular in the UK gaming press in the 1980s and 1990s as it has that vibe about it and a lot of the writers across the publications for this publishing house are shared.

Book details:

Editor in Cheif: Chris Wilkins

Editor: Alana Hammerton

Layout: Trevor Storey

Cover: Trevor Storey

Contributions from: Paul Henderson, Retro Faith, Ben Honebone, Ryan Coleman, Simon Butler, Melanie Honebone, Ander Fisher, Toy Polloi, Colin Bell, Ian Osbourne, DJ Slopes, Barry Morse, George Sturgeon, Ceri Roberts, Ben Magnet, Andrew Oysten, Alan Hammerton & Paul Twist

Format: Hardcover, A5, 115 pages

Publisher: Fusion Retro Books

Contents:

FLB: Cobra

Emulating the Amiga

Crypt of Chaos

Boglins

FLB: Call of Cthulu

Daze Beofre Christmas

Creaks

Shadowman Remastered

The Adams Family Pinball